


oh furious heart

by hoosierbitch



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Reconciliation, Team Bonding, Team as Family, the washington capitals are stanley cup champions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 15:56:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15889260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosierbitch/pseuds/hoosierbitch
Summary: The Caps don’t win the Cup in 2018.





	oh furious heart

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, alfadorcat, who stubbornly (and sensibly) has refused to fall into hockey fandom with me, but still agreed to beta this! ♥ And thanks to pr_scatterbrain, who has offered invaluable conversation, feedback, and late-night Caps research feels.
> 
> I started working on this in the spring of 2018, before Stanley Cup Playoffs started. With the specter of another early exit on the horizon, it seemed possible that—given Backstrom’s reaction to early eliminations in the past—if it happened again, something would have to change for 2018-2019. Because thinking about Nicke leaving the Caps made me feel a lot of bad feelings, I wrote a way that the Caps could lose, Nicke could have his feelings, and things could still end up okay! 
> 
> Here’s an excerpt from the article that’s mentioned in the fic:
>
>> Nicklas Backstrom’s voice was hoarse and soft as he leaned back against the wall. “It’s been terrible,” he said last May. “Obviously.” …Perhaps no other player wore the frustration of the organization more than he did.
>> 
>> Coach Barry Trotz has spoken often of how his team was still in mourning when players arrived for training camp. That period of grief seemed to extend through mid-November.   
> 
> 
>   
> Source is the Washington Post article: [ _Nicklas Backstrom, the picture of the Capitals’ playoff pain, is now the image of their joy._](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capitals-insider/wp/2018/04/22/nicklas-backstrom-the-picture-of-the-capitals-playoff-pain-is-now-the-image-of-their-joy/)

The Post ran an article about the Caps’ playoff failures that called Nicke the “picture of the Capitals’ playoff pain.” He read it while stabbing a grapefruit until it was mangled enough to be palatable. It wasn’t that anything in the article was substantively wrong, but that didn’t mean he had to _like_ it.

 

* * *

 

When he got to Kettler, he found tampons, Midol, and a bag of chocolates in his locker. The nameplate had been replaced with “Mean Lars,” and there were Post-it notes of crying emojis plastered across his visor. (Later, he’d find an army of smirking devils in his jockstrap.)

“Nice job, guys. Very good.” He held up his gifts so that everyone could have a good laugh. At least they hadn’t caused any property damage (the training staff had not been thrilled when they had to de-goo-ify puking rainbow stickers off Schmidty’s gear during last playoffs). “I’m glad you liked the article. I had no idea you could read.”

“You aren't mad at us anymore, though, right?” Andre asked, with an earnesty that didn't fit him as well as it had when he was a rookie.

"I wasn't mad at you," Nicke said with a sigh. “I was mad at…at what happened.” Andre gave him puppy dog eyes (which, damnit, did still work as well as it had when he’d been eighteen and sleeping on Nicke’s couch). "I promise: even if I was mad, I'm not mad anymore.”

“Even at Ovi?” Tom asked.

“What? I wasn't mad at Ovi.”

“Um,” Tom said.

“Um,” Burra repeated, a hesitant, elongated sound.

Nicke threw the bag of chocolate at Tom, and the box of tampons at the other wayward child. “I wasn't mad at Ovi! Ovi, tell them.”

Ovi, just finishing up with his pads, gave his thighs a satisfied smack and stood up. “Is okay, Nicke, I mad too. It was what it was, but we all better now.”

 

* * *

 

(Nicke forgot sometimes, in the heat of his own carefully tended rage, that Ovi didn't get mad for longer than it took him to score; he didn’t get mad unless he was on the ice and his team had been wronged; he didn't get mad at Nicke, even when he should.

If Ovi was mad after last season, he was mad at himself.)

 

* * *

 

They faced Columbus in the first round.

They lost the first three games in overtime.

There was no coming back from that.

 

* * *

 

Alex waited until after locker room clean-out to pull Nicke aside for a talk. The room was already empty of personal equipment, but otherwise looked the same. A skeleton crew would work over the summer, offering the space to visiting teams, high schoolers, Make a Wish kids; letting them have a taste of the dream. As if being a Washington Capital had any glamour left.

Alex looked gaunt in a way that wouldn't look unhealthy if Nicke didn't know the way he was supposed to look, the way he looked arriving at training camp, before the ordeal of the season and the gauntlet of playoffs took their toll.

Nicke had barely lost weight this year. He still had calories to burn. (Every part of him felt ready for that fire; his old anger like dry underbrush, whispering for an excuse.)

“I'm say this to you as captain,” Ovi said. “Not as friend. Okay?” Nicke nodded and leaned back on the massage table to listen. Ovi shifted his weight uneasily, then took a deep breath. “If I’m still gonna be you captain next season…”

Nicke startled at that. The possibility of a blockbuster trade sending him to a different team hadn't been voiced to his face yet. He'd thought they weren't going to mention it. He'd thought no one believed it could really happen. Ovi, apparently, thought otherwise. “What?”

“Nicke—” Softly, privately, like Alex still had some claim to intimacy, “don't come back angry again.”

Nicke felt his cheeks flush. His hands tightened their grip on the edge of the table, but he wanted a stick in his hands, wanted to wield it like a spear, stab Ovi until he stopped talking, tear his heart out too and refuse to give it back. They would match, then: two heartless assholes who couldn’t stop hurting.

“You think I should just be happy? That work so great for us?” He heard the anger in his voice, uncontrolled, volatile. “Only thing what matters is ‘everyone have fun?’ You having fun now?” Nicke hadn’t had fun since he won gold for Sweden last summer, a moment of success in another year of failure.

“I think it's new team next year,” Ovi said, staring at Nicke’s feet. The light from above made the circles under his eyes look cavernous. He was a wood carving representation of a man: dark beard and starving eyes over a brutal, wrung out body. Nicke could look at him for years. Had looked at him for over a decade. Might not look at him this close for this long again.

“Is that all?” Nicke asked.

Ovi shrugged. Tilted his head. Softened, in a way that meant, _I'm done being captain now, I’m going to smile at you and I know that you will smile back._

“I’ll see you in the fall,” Nicke said. “If you're still my captain.”

 

* * *

 

He seethed in Sweden.

(In his darker, drunker moments, he doubted. Doubted the usefulness of his anger although he saw no point in reevaluating its legitimacy.

 _Had_ he put their chances in jeopardy last year? Would they have gone farther if he'd been more—he didn't even know. Happier? More like Ovi? He didn't think so.

Most of the time, he didn't think so.)

 

* * *

 

He came back angry. He did his best to keep it to himself, and did it well enough that Alex didn’t call him on it.

Alex didn’t really talk to him at all. Nicke didn’t force him to, didn’t ask, _Are you disappointed I’m back? Disappointed I’m not some other captain’s problem now?_ There was nothing useful to be learned from whatever answers Ovi had to give.

 

* * *

 

On the last day of camp, Ted Leonsis and Brian MacLellan came into the locker room to introduce themselves to the new players and announce the alternate captains. MacLellan looked tired, which Nicke felt viciously happy about. Trotz had been MacLellan’s pick, and Trotz had been the biggest reason for the latest string of failures. He should feel bad.

Ted looked thinner, tanner, and more vibrant. Nicke liked him less and less every year too. They were forcing a casual mood. This was a departure from the norm, and even the guys with no-trade clauses looked nervous.

“Great camp,” Leonsis said, with a clap of his soft hands. His beard was too trim; Nicke didn’t like it. “I’d like to wish you all congratulations on your hard work so far, it’s going to be a really exciting season around here.”

“That being said,” McLellan said, “it’s time to announce the alternate captains.”

Maybe they were going to give Brooks’s A to TJ. Or to Carlson, maybe, keep it on the defense. They would give it to Orlov if they were smart. Maybe Braden, if they were feeling brave or clever.

McLellan said Nicke’s name and he got a polite round of applause. Then Brooks’s, and Nicke made a point to smile while he clapped. But even though the Capitals had never had more than two alternates before, MacLellan still had another A to give out. “John Carlson.”

“Carly and Brooks will be alternating their duties," Ted said, with a jovial smile. Carly looked confused but pleased. "Carly at home, Brooksy on the road.” There was another round of applause, but after it died down, there was a long, awkward silence. Nicke looked around and saw his confusion mirrored in everyone's expression except Brooks's. They must have talked this over with him earlier.

He couldn’t tell what Alex was thinking. He was staring fixedly at Ted. (At _Mr. Leonsis_ , who Ovi once described as a friendly toymaker. Ted, Nicke thought, wanted to be a puppet-master.)

MacLellan cleared his throat, then, looking pointedly at Ted, said, “We have one last announcement.”

There was yet another A, a new patch waiting for a jersey, in Ted’s hands.

“We’re—we’re going to be rolling four A’s this season,” Ted said, with an anemic smile. "Nicke, Brooksy, Carly—and Ovi.”

In all the confusion Ovi didn’t once look at Nicke.

 

* * *

 

They explained it wasn’t about a lack of confidence, not a reflection on performance.

And maybe that was true. It didn’t feel that way and it wouldn’t sound that way, to each other or to reporters or to other teams.

 

* * *

 

He pulled Ovi into a side room after the meeting. making a mental note to apologize later to the poor PR intern in charge of Ovi's schedule that day, who was holding up a clipboard and looked vaguely stunned when Nicke slammed the door in her face. Tom and Chands were in the room finishing some breakfast, but when they saw who'd entered they apologized—to Nicke—and fled. (He hoped they choked on their half-eaten bagels.)

"Did you know they gonna do this?" Nicke spit at him. Ovi shrugged. "You knew," Nicke said, pointing a finger at Ovi, shoving him back with it. "What the fuck."

"Is good for team," Ovi murmured.

"Fuck that. This is what you meant, wasn't it?" He could choke on the questions building up inside of him. He'd choke Ovi on them instead. "You said—you didn't know if you'd be my captain. Did you mean this? Did you know I wasn't going to get traded?"

"Is little bit long summer," Ovi said, with a wry smile after. All their summers as Capitals had been too long. He clasped Nicke's outstretched hand gently in both of his. But Nicke didn't want to be soothed like some het up rookie in a scrum who didn't know his own emotions. He pulled away, off-balance, unhappy.

Ovi’s smile, relaxed and small and unfamiliar, didn’t change. "I'm tired, Backe. We fight later, okay?"

 

* * *

 

The reporters asked Alex, over and over again, “What’s it like to lose the captaincy?” They weren’t satisfied with easy answers.

Ted had assured them that it wasn't because of anything Ovi did or didn't do. The coaches said it, Ovi said it, the team parroted it. The reporters didn't believe them but to be fair, they weren't terribly convincing.

Ovi said it was good, it was fine, he was having fun, he felt 21 again ("like I just drink my first beer in America," with a wink and a grin). He pointed out that they did this to Joe Thornton, and the Sharks finally made it into the final round. He said he was happy to see Carly with an A. Proud to be part of the team.

 

* * *

 

Every time he saw Ovi in a jersey with an A on the front, Nicke got a little angrier: at the front office staff who didn't trust him, at the team for being so terrible that a change this drastic was needed, at himself, for all those reasons and more he couldn't name.

Every time he saw Ovi in a jersey without the C, he looked…smaller. Like he'd never gotten back up to the right body weight, not started or finished his summer strength training. The pundits didn’t applaud his trim fit this year, his leadership, his team, their chances.

Nicke couldn't remember what Ovi had been like, nearly a decade prior, when he'd only had the A. He thought about it maybe too much: his first two and a half seasons, the way the Young Guns had stepped into the spotlight together, the way Ovi had felt like everyone’s brother until Chris Clark moved and Ovi stepped up and into the captaincy. Had they taken the C because Ovi wasn't the man he used to be, or was Ovi like this now—this thin, anemic thin— _because_ they took the C away?

Nicke felt that if he could remember it, maybe it would provide some answers.

Who had they been when expectations of success were heavier than expectations of failure? Who had Ovi been? What had made Nicke love him then that wasn’t there now?

Maybe the fact that he couldn’t remember was enough of an answer for how much they’d all changed since then. How far away from the happiest years of their careers they were now.

 

* * *

 

Halfway through preseason they start talking to Nicke about extensions and new deals, _locking him up for the future_ , which they said like that was a good thing and not a prison sentence.

And it _shouldn't_ feel like a prison sentence. Being in Washington; staying there.

Every year, they got closer to the Cup more consistently than almost any other team in the league. But it had stopped feeling like an accomplishment the first time the Pens beat them on their way to the Cup. It burned deeper every time after that.

Maybe they should have taken Ovi’s C away a year ago.

Maybe now it was already too late.

He’d probably take the money (maybe not as good as somewhere else, but with the moving costs, the taxes, he’d be close to breaking even).

He and management shook hands on a tentative arrangement and agreed to meet again further into the season.

He'd probably stay if they still wanted him. If he could bear to be locked up, in DC, to fail the same way, until he left the NHL for good.

 

* * *

 

Ovi still took most of the ceremonial puck drops. He was still the first one to get bad news from refs, or insert himself into scrums to calm things down. He was still the Great 8, still the longest-tenured Capitals, still in the race for the Rocket Richard. He was still the one everyone wanted something from, and he was still just as bad as saying no as he had been when Nicke was a rookie.

 

* * *

 

Practice wasn't fun, but they were winning. Todd had reined in the assistant coaches, made them work for him and not independently. Nicke wasn't sure if that would hold up under the weight of playoffs, but it was working now. He hadn't tried to make Ovi switch sides of the ice. He'd kept the top power play unit together.

Nicke was still centering the second line, Kuzy the first. The demotion stung more now than it had last season, when it had been an almost seamless transition. He thought he’d gotten over it, but he’s had to question a lot of certainties.

"We all need to step up," Brooks said, after their first loss of the season, four games in. “We win or lose as a team.”

 

* * *

 

Nicke called Mojo as often as he could. Mojo was still stuck in the shithole of New Jersey and Nicke was determined to do his duty as a best friend.

They talked about Sweden, about how much they hated American food, about what it would be like to live in an IKEA and how they’d never admit publicly how great it would probably be.

It was early November when he was interrupted by the doorbell during the final problem-solving stage of how one could theoretically convince the Swedish embassy to grant overnight access to an IKEA. (There was a new one in Colorado. If their team continued to fall apart, and he got traded to the fucking Avs, there’s no way he’d try to turn some shitty suburb house into as nice a place as he’d _finally_ gotten his house in DC.)

Burky was standing outside, shivering in the brisk wind, wearing a t-shirt with #29 on it and no jacket. He held up an oversized bright blue IKEA bag. Inside was a bottle of gin.

“Mojo said I should bring you booze so that you’d leave him alone.”

Nicke glared at his phone as he stabbed the end call button, then took the hint (and the gin) and shut the door in Burra’s face.

 

* * *

 

Management was so careful not to say anything critical about the restructuring that it took months before Nicke realized that—as much as the change had been an indictment of Ovi’s captaincy—it had been more of an indictment of the team as a whole.

Yes, they were saying, “We all have to step up now.”

But they were also saying, “You did not step up enough last year.”

It took him longer to realize than it should have.

He'd been mad at himself for not trying harder, mad at the team for not playing better, mad at the coaches for shithead stupid decisions, but. There was a level of personal accountability for collective failure that they had all been able to sidestep.

It is a shitty thing to realize: there were responsibilities he’d failed.

He hadn’t learned to be a leader. He’d stood in Ovi’s shadow and been the power behind his throne, speaking only after Ovi’s words fell flat. It was a natural role to play. But it had been Ovi getting the bulk of the praise and the brunt of the criticism, it had been Nicklas feeling smug, then helpless, futile and frustrated.

They hadn't been partners there the way they were on the ice, but it had worked. It had worked well enough. It had worked for a while.

They should have thought of this a long time ago. He wondered why Leonsis hadn’t.

He wondered if, now, it was too late.

 

* * *

 

Nicke sat next to Ovi on the flight home after a loss in OT to Pittsburgh. Ovi was grumpy, but expansively so; he and Zhenya trading shoves on the ice but also said “hello” after in the hall.

"I didn't do what you said," Nicke said.

“What you mean?”

"The summer. I came back angry."

Ovi smiled. "Sorry I say that. It's—obviously, is okay."

"No. If you had still been captain, when I came back—then, it would not be okay.”

"If I'm captain, we have more bigger problems than just me and you," Ovi said with a smile.

"Shut up a minute and let me be sorry.” Trotz had tried to play marriage counselor to varying degrees of success, but the team had been a family mid-divorce through the first half of the season. Todd was even less equipped to mediate between his feuding stars than Trotz was. It was up to them to fix it this year. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. I'm sorry about last year too. If—"

"Nicke," Ovi said. "Stop." His face reflected an unfamiliar, uncomfortable unhappiness. "I can't keep thinking about what we did wrong. I'm—but I'm not ignore it, I'm not forget," he added quickly, preemptively defending himself from criticism, as if it was Don Cherry sitting next to him instead of Nicke. "I know we gotta learn from what happen, we gotta learn how to not screw up again—"

"Shut up,” Nicke said. “You’re—” He chewed the inside of his cheek, lips and tongue not sure what words to form or how to share them. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re fuck-ups for a decade. I think we learn enough."

With each obedient nod of Ovi’s head, he seemed to shrink, to sink into his chair a little bit more, a little bit further away.

“I got cards,” Nicke said. “You wanna play?”

“No.”

“M&Ms?”

“No, Nicke.”

“Hmm.”

A minute later Alex nudged him in the side with an elbow, gave him a small smile. “Peanut? The M&Ms?”

“Of course,” Nicke grumbled, pulling them out of his bag and pouring some into Ovi’s outstretched hand.

 

* * *

 

Their next loss was to the Penguins, and it was at home, and it was bad.

There had been no friendly exchange in the halls after, just their teams passing each other in the standings.

And now he and Ovi were drunk, sloppy sophomore season kind of drunk, sitting on the curb outside the bar and squinting at the stars past the street lights.

“Is it my fault?” Nicke asked.

"Is what your fault?" Ovi asked.

 _This_ , maybe. This strangeness. The way it took alcohol and atmosphere to allow them to breathe easily around each other. "The C,” he said, forcing honestly past the tightness in his throat.

"No. That's—it's not anyone fault, it’s—" Ovi started to say. But when Nicke said his name, half plea and half warning, _Ovi_ , he said, "Is my fault, Nicke. Okay? That what you want hear?"

Nicke’s anger evaporated, waved away like cigarette smoke. Sasha Semin used to fill Ovi's house and car with the cloying sweet cigarettes he rolled himself, and Ovi complained but never meant it, had never wanted anyone to leave.

"I should have done more," Nicke said.

"No! It's not, you—"

"I _could_ have done more," he corrected himself. Ovi frowned. "I'm...I'm mad," he said.

Ovi snorted a laugh and Nicke swatted him on the shoulder. (It was instinctual and felt instantly awkward. They didn't have that kind of closeness anymore, not once they were back in their own clothes, away from the rink.) Ovi leaned into him heavily, arm against arm.

"I have a lot of—of mad left, when season over,” Nicke explained. “Enough energy still, to be mad. And then I'm mad at myself, like, why I didn't use that in a game? If I still can stand after we lose, then I didn't play hard enough."

"You don't got to kill yourself to play hockey."

"No. But maybe yes if we want to get Cup."

Ovi nodded. Shrugged, and settled back down, a bit farther away. Nicke noticed the chill in the air. He missed summer.

"I didn't...I never ask you if you need help." The team had always done a good job of protecting Ovi from outside attacks, but they'd—they'd maybe bought into the myth a little bit too much.

They’d met regularly throughout the season, the captain and alternates, to talk about the players, the practices, the games. Ovi always asked Brooks about his wife and kids. Asked Nicke how Brynäs was doing. The three of them had taken care of the team, and Ovi took care of all of them, and—and that’s where it stopped. Trotz had helped some, maybe. He’d been the first coach who’d felt more like an ally than an enemy.

Ovi'd hid the hamstring injury from most of them during the 2017 playoffs to the point where it wasn't until the news broke about him turning down the invite for the World Cup that any of them had realized the severity.

(And maybe some of them, maybe Nicke, maybe for a second, had wondered if Ovi was using it as an excuse to run away to lick his wounds. He hadn't thought: _maybe there are other wounds too, the extent of which I have not seen, ones that are the twins of mine_.)

"Can I help now?" Nicke asked, maybe foolishly, maybe years too late, maybe hoping the answer would be yes.

Ovi shrugged, then sighed and slouched enough to rest his head on Nicke’s shoulder. "Maybe you shoot bit more, I not have to score all our goals."

“Sure,” Nicke said, wishing that the tightness in his throat earlier that had made it so hard to speak would come back. It was too late at night, they were so many drinks in—

If he was going to say anything else, he’d say it in later. He’d say it sober. He’d say it even if it scared him.

 

* * *

 

Christmas break lulled him into a false sense of security, that blessed vacation from reporters and their ambushes. They were in Florida, everybody sporting the hint of sunburn from a team day on the beach—Nicke’s team had lost terribly at volleyball, but decimated the competition over shuffleboard—and an ESPN reporter stuck a mic in his face.

“Nicky,” he said, with the round accent and over-familiarity of an American, “did they ask you to be captain? If they didn’t, how do you feel about that?”

He went hot and then cold, a frost burn sort of feeling, and some of it must have shown through because the reporter took a step back.

“No,” Nicke said. “If a captain is what we needed, we would have a Cup, because Ovi is—was—everything. We just…needed to try something else.”

“You really _aren’t_ mad at us anymore,” Burra said afterwards, tackling Nicke in his stall and settling in his lap.

“I wasn’t—” Fuck. “No, I’m not mad.”

“Good,” Burra said. “I don’t like you so much when you’re mean.” Nicke’s chest hurt with more than just the two-hundred odd pounds of grown adopted son squishing him.

“I’m sorry I was mad,” Nicke said. Softly at first, in Swedish, to Burra, to the boy who’d lived in his home and become family. “Sorry I was—was—”

“Bitch?” Kuzy suggested.

“ _Raging_ bitch,” chimed in TJ.

“I’m disown all of you,” Nicke said. “I’m mean Lars forever.”

The chants of “Mean Lars Forever” hopefully didn’t make it past the cinderblock walls and into any reporters’ notebooks.

 

* * *

 

(“You’re not still mad at _you_ , though, are you?” Djoos asked him later.

“No,” Nicke said. “Mostly, no. Just…”

“Sad?”

“Yeah,” Nicke said. He pulled Djoos in for a hug, Djoos’s long arms wrapping around his shoulders like the wings of a giant, sleepy bird.)

 

* * *

 

Nicke showed up at Ovi’s house uninvited with a reusable bag packed full of Tea House carryout. He’d used Ovi’s name, so the bag was heavier than it should have been; there were probably desserts or vodka at the bottom. (Both, as it turned out.)

They put on a game while they ate, Dallas Stars because Ovi liked the announcers and Nicke liked to keep tabs on Klingberg’s development.

By the end of the second period Nicke was tired, heavy with food, sore from slouching but too comfortable to move.

"I didn't mean to hurt the team," Ovi said during a commercial break, his eyes flicking over to Nicke and then away. His lips twitched in a grimace of a smile. "I thought—when I became Captain, I thought, ‘I'm gonna help get us to Cup.’ I ask everybody first, before I take C, if they want—if they think—"

"I know," Nicke said. "I remember." Ovi'd talked in person or over the phone to everyone on the team. Nicke’d been there with him, nodding along, making encouraging thumbs up signs when Ovi stumbled over what he needed to say. He remembered better now (or maybe his mind was filling in the blanks) what Ovi had been like before the C.

He’d told Nicke first. _Asked_ him first. "They want make me captain. Is it—what you think?" They'd been sitting in a different couch then, in a smaller house on the other side of town. Ovi had been looking at him; Nicke had been looking at the TV.

Nicke turned now, pulled up his knees, and gave Ovi an appraising look. "Without you, we wouldn't have made it to playoffs half so much."

"But maybe…"

"Maybe we'd go farther one of the years? Some of them?"

"And I just...I don't know what to do, now." Play had resumed. Nicke turned the volume down to hear Alex better. "The way I'm—the way I'm captain, it's no good. Try stay positive, be happy. I don't know what to do, Nicke. I can't keep do what I did, can't hurt team like that again—"

"No," Nicke interrupted. " _No_."

"Probably I'm just, should shut up and score goals. Or, or score assists, I... And that's—so, I—”

Nicke reached for him, and Sasha flinched, a quiet gasping sound and new distance in between them. "Is it true they tried to trade you?" Nicke asked, quiet as a murmur in church with the Dallas Stars announcers delivering their lively sermon.

"I think they shop us all," Ovi said quietly. “See what they can get."

"Ted called me. Asked what did I think about Winnipeg."

Alex froze. "What—what you say? You're—"

"He called in summer," Nicke said hastily. "Not, like, he didn't just call." He smiled a little helplessly at Ovi's huge exhale of relief. "I tell him, Winnipeg is not Washington. My contract not over. My work not over."

"I thought you sick of lose," Ovi said, voice cracking with strain. "I thought you want win this time."

"I want to win here,” he said. He wanted to win in Washington, in red; he wanted to raise the Cup for the DC family. He wanted to watch Ovi raise the Cup. Fuck it. He thought of the way he’d choked under spotlights in big games, the way he’d choked in starlight outside exhausting nightclubs, he thought about the taste of good gin and clove cigarettes and the teammates who hadn’t stayed, the one who meant the most who had.

"Ted call me over summer too,” Alex said. “He ask me about Winnipeg. I say, 'I do what is best for the team.'"

(And when Ted had called Nicke, Nicke had said that he wanted to stay in DC.) “I thought—maybe, it would be nice. To—to not be captain. To not be—It was—” Ovi sounded ashamed.

Nicke owed him something. Some absolution. Owed Ted Leonsis something too. Something, some _one_ , had stopped that Winnipeg deal from going through. _Puppet-master_ , Nicke thought. _Toymaker, mastermind_.

"Maybe," Nicke said. "Maybe it would have been that way." There was no way to know. And it wasn’t—it hadn't all been bad, the way it had turned out. “Alex—Sasha—I want to win with you. Want to play with you. Play _our_ hockey."

He wanted to break every record the franchise had ever set, break the Blackhawks' records along the way, he wanted to be the one to chisel Ovi's name into the Richard a few more times.

He didn't mention the Cup and Ovi didn’t either.

 

* * *

 

He took the day off the next time they had an optional skate. Took a couple of shots to bolster his courage and got started on his project. He felt dumb while doing it, but he did it anyway.

He Googled all the keywords he could think of, made some notes, then called an Uber and went on a tipsy trip to Hobby Lobby, with Mojo on the other end of the phone, cackling and being utterly unhelpful.

He loaded everything into his trunk the next morning (his Hobby Lobby haul, along with last minute post-it notes from Amazon Prime, this shit was harder than he thought) and lugged the whole mess into MedStar before practice.

He put post-it notes and markers in everybody’s stall, then hung three poster boards up on the wall of the locker room. Each one with a question at the top:

  * How can I help my team?
  * How can I help my teammates?
  * How can my teammates help me?



He’d cleared it with Todd, so instead of video review (which, they’d played the Sens, there weren’t many lessons to learn there), Nicke stood up and explained the exercise, his face starting red and getting redder.

Everybody wrote an answer for each question and put them up on the boards, then took a few minutes to read each other’s answers.

Ovi was entranced and delighted by this intellectual game of arts and crafts, but everyone was happy to take it seriously.

Mercifully, Todd took over the discussion and Nicke sat in his stall and chewed on a hoodie string. The conversation ranged from the overly honest (god bless rookies), the utterly unsurprising (physical contact? Burke and TJ? who would have guessed), and the unexpected. (“Let me know if I go too far,” from a quiet Tom. “Don’t let me be the guy you’d hate if I were on the other team.”)

Dima added Russian translations of the questions, then Vrana in Czech. "Maybe we can do some 'words of the day' in other languages," Brooks mused, as players added translations of various post-it notes on request. "We could put it up on the standings board each day. Get some prize for whoever remembers the most words each month."

"Good idea, Batya," Kuzma said, giving him a smacking kiss on the cheek. "Big happy family."

 

* * *

 

They beat the Canucks at home in a shootout. Nicke still hated the tiebreaker rules; if the other team got a point, it didn't feel like _winning_. He'd registered an assist on a goal of Ovi's in the second. He was in a goal-scoring drought, but he cared about that much less than the pundits seemed to think he should.

Todd gave them a few post-game notes, mostly a congratulatory speech for Conno, who'd scored twice in the third period. _Almost enough to bring them back to win it._ Nicke shook himself of the urge to grimace and cheered instead. They had won.

"Practice tomorrow starts at 10am, it'll be an easy skate and then a lot of video. Interviews tonight are Conno and Ovi. Alright, guys—"

"I don't think I can do interview," Ovi interrupted. "I'm little bit tired. Maybe need ice pack instead of microphone."

Nicke had never, in nearly twelve years, heard Ovi refuse an interview assignment from PR.

The room exploded a little, as trainers and then teammates reacted with varying levels of alarm. Batya nearly shoulder-checked someone as he bustled over and put a hand on Alex's forehead. "You feel warm. Are you sick?" Ovi laughed and started pushing everyone away.

"You all nuts! I'm good, it's fine, nothing is wrong!" Kuzy nonetheless succeeded in tucking a towel around Ovi's shoulders. Burke and Djoos had their hands full of ice packs.

Nicke sat down next to Ovi, forcing Kuzy to scoot over. ( _Such huge ass, I can't believe,_ Kuzy muttered.)

"You okay?"

"Yeah, of course. I'm Russian Machine, nev—"

"Hey." Ovi shut up for a second. The room was still on pause, still waiting to see what was going to happen. Nicke hated and loved their neurotic, needy team, so much. "It's okay if you tired. If you need a break, it's good you ask. Holtz will do interview—had great game, right boys?" Everyone took that as their cue to start cheering for Holtz’s shootout performance, chanting for a speech as they resumed post-game activities.

"Here." Djoos handed Nicke his ice packs and went back to his stall; Burky set his on top of Alex's head and followed.

"Go," Alex said, nudging Nicke. "I'm old and tired, I'm not dying."

"Don't tell me what to do, you're not my captain anymore." (This got a few whistles from whoever was still eavesdropping, a few _ooohs_ and _aaaahs_. Nicke flipped everyone the bird.) "I want stay here. Unless—you want I go?" Ovi shook his head silently.

"I want you go!" Kuzy said. "You big ass where my small ass supposed to be!" But he was already trundling across the floor to Nicke's locker, where he began making himself at home.

“I thought this be hard for me, not you,” Ovi said to him, a quiet aside.

“What’s hard?”

“I know what’s hard!” Devo chimed in, wagging his eyebrows until Nicke glared.

Ovi leaned in, his words between his lips and Nicke’s hoodie. “Saying—you know. Say, ‘little bit, I’m tired. Hurts, little bit.’”

“Oh.” Nicke stared at his hands, his chewed-down fingernails, the finger that had healed crooked, the cost of carrying on keeping his hurt all inside. “We’ll practice,” Nicke said. “Get really good at being—being not okay, and say so. Okay?”

“Okay, Nicke.” Ovi’s shoulders loosened. He leaned against Nicke’s side. “You, me, always okay.”

 

* * *

 

The regular season drew to an end. They qualified for playoffs, silencing none of their detractors and raising the anxiety levels of all of their supporters. Ted came down to the locker room the night that their win over the Panthers got them into the playoffs. He shook his Nicke's hand, and said, “Good luck next game.”

“And next year,” Nicke said. “No matter what.” Ted’s smile got softer. He pulled Nicke in again. His eyes looked suspiciously shiny.

Nicke gave his shoulder a firm pat before leaving to meet with the Post reporter. She was writing another article about the playoffs, about the underdogs who get kicked and come back for more. She asked him what felt different about this year.

“I think last year—and years before that—I want to win, because I want the Cup. Now, this year…” He paused. He thought about the last interview, in which he’d been too honest; he thought about all the good things that had come from it. Maybe they’d win. Maybe they'd go out in the second round to the Pittsburgh fucking Penguins; maybe they wouldn’t even make it past Columbus in the first. The only thing Nicke was sure of was that—even if the results were the same—this year would feel different. After years of Groundhog Day disappointments, at least this year, they would fail differently.

Maybe that shouldn't be enough to keep him here. Maybe that shouldn't be enough to earn his signature on the dotted line, his loyalty: _lock me up for the rest of my career, no matter what the results—whether we fail differently or whether we win it all—I want to try again._

“It’s special. They’re special. And I don’t…” He looked around the locker room. “I just want to keep playing hockey. I don’t want this to end.”

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is loved and adored!


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